He left us alone. I watched two young women engage in animated conversation. Finally, one of them took a book she was carrying and quickly threw it into the trashcan, then got back in line. The guard walked back in a moment later and led us into the next hallway through yet another series of locked doors.
True to his word, another guard arrived with an intimidating-looking Malinois, which worked his way through the line. I had seen them work in Ass-Crackistan and other shitholes of the world and had a tremendous respect for both those beautiful animals and their K-9 handlers.
The dog got to the friend of the woman who had tossed the book and started barking. She was pulled from the line, her friend acting like she had no idea who the woman was, as a female officer was brought in to take the woman to another room—for strip searching, I would assume. I never knew what they’d found, if anything, but I never saw her again. The rest of us were led through a myriad of hallways until we were walked into a large room filled with stainless-steel tables that were bolted to the floor. Guards walked around stone-faced, their eyes scanning every inch of the room.
As I glanced around, it occurred to me that I had no idea who I was looking for. He would look nothing like the kid who had been arrested, tried and found guilty twenty years ago.
All the other visitors went quickly to their inmate relations and sat right down. I stood and looked around the room like an idiot. A guard was kind enough to ask me if I was looking for someone, and I told him Benjamin McComb. He pointed to a man sitting alone at a table in yet another orange jumpsuit.
I walked over, sat down and looked into the eyes of a ghost. Ben had long, greasy-looking hair, tied in a ponytail. His face was clean-shaven, revealing a few nasty-looking scars over his eyes and chin. He was skinny and vacant-looking. I couldn’t help but wonder if they had him drugged.
“Hello, Ben,” I said in as soothing a voice as I could muster. “I’m Cory Walker.” Out of habit, I extended my hand.
He shot a glance at a nearby guard and said, “Sorry, no contact.”
“Right. Sorry. Thanks for agreeing to see me.”
“You said you think you can help me get another trial?” His accent hinted at the Harkers Island sound that he hadn’t heard in twenty years.
“Maybe. I want you to know that I’m not a reporter or a cop or a lawyer or anything like that. I’m just a regular guy who happened to buy the old Stone house on Harkers Island.”
If he was surprised, his face didn’t show much. In fact, he looked fairly catatonic.
“You were convicted of raping and killing Casey Stone. Did you do it?”
That got his attention. He stared at me for a full minute. He looked at me like he wanted to hit me.
“You drive all the way here to ask me that?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
“No, Mr. Walker. Casey and me? We were boyfriend and girlfriend, sort of. Her father hated my guts. We were just kids. She’d sneak out to the dunes and we’d hang out with our friends. We’d make out sometimes, sometimes a little more, but it was kid stuff. We never had sex.” His eyes welled up. He spoke softly, trying not to get choked up. “I’m getting close to forty years old, sir. And I ain’t never had sex. Convicted of rape and I’m gonna die a virgin in here.”
His eyes were watering over. It was pretty hard to watch. Of course, I could be speaking with a rapist murdering liar—which was the other possibility.
“Why did they arrest you?”
“’Cause they didn’t have nobody else to arrest. You’re living in that house now. You see how small Harkers is. Everyone knows everyone. And everyone knew that Casey and I were sneaking around together. Her father had a lot of juice back in those days.”
“He has a lot more now. You watch the news?”
“We don’t get much TV time. Assholes make us watch cartoons when they have the TV on. I think they’re trying to make us all nuts.”
“Yeah, well, Earl Stone is now Congressman Stone.”
It was like I’d told him Santa wasn’t real. His mouth opened and he just stared.
“Congressman? Like in Washington?”
“That’s the place, yeah. He wants to be President of the United States.”
Ben slumped back in his chair, destroyed, and stared at the ceiling lights. “You can’t help me,” he said, his voice flat. He looked like he was ready to stand up.
“Wait! Maybe I can, but I’ll need your help if anyone is going to listen to me. I need to know exactly what happened that night. And anything you can tell me about Earl Stone? Or Casey’s mom?”
He looked totally shot and spoke very softly. “It was a long time ago. But for nearly twenty years all I’ve had to think about is the good days with Casey. She was so smart and funny and beautiful. She was also pretty fucked up.”
That didn’t surprise me, after what I’d been reading. “What do you mean? How?”
“Shit was going on at home. I think her daddy was beating on her and her momma.”
“Yethy,” I said, trying to be cool. It had the desired effect. A long, slow grin crossed his face, showing me prison dental work.
“Yethy? God, Mr. Walker, I haven’t heard toidy in twenty years. You been on Harkers long?”
“No. Just trying to catch on.”
“Yeah, well…yethy is right. Something stunk bad. Once I asked her about her dad, and she got real upset, so I never did again. Then, another time, right before she was killed, we were messing around, ya know? We had gone farther than we ever had before, and it was getting kind of hot and heavy, ya know? Anyway…you know…well…she freaked out.”
“I’m not sure I follow you,” I said. I wanted him to be as clear as possible.
“I unzipped her jeans, okay?” He wiped his face awkwardly with his hands and took a moment, trying to find the right words, then leaned in real close, almost whispering. “We’d been humpin’ and grinding on the sand, ya know? She was really pushing herself against me and moaning and I was thinkin’ ‘tonight’s the night’. At first, she was totally into it. Then I unzipped her jeans and she freaked out and screamed that she wasn’t a whore. It was weird, man…like I made her do it or something. But I swear on my grandma’s grave that I wasn’t forcing her to do anything. She was totally into it, the same as me. Then she just totally freaked out.”
“What did she say about her father?”
“Like I said, it was babbling nonsense, but I know he hated my guts. I think he was crazy or something. She was scared of him.”
“You were both young—”
“No, man. You don’t get it. I ain’t saying it right. When she was freaking out, she started babbling like a crazy girl and said some weird shit about her daddy. I didn’t get it. She just wanted to get home, and she left. That was the second-to-last time I saw her.”
“The second-to-last time?” That was stunning. “What happened the last time you saw her?”
A guard announced, “Two minutes!”
“Damn. We don’t have much time, Ben. Tell me about the last time you saw her.”
“We were down on the beach. Three couples. We made a bonfire. We drank some beers. Last beer I ever had.” He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. Recounting all this was getting to him. “It was the best night of my life. I wouldn’t ever have hurt that girl. I loved Casey. She told me she loved me that night. She told me!”
He was now getting fairly agitated, and the nearby guard walked over. “Okay, that’s enough. Stand up, McComb.”
Ben stood at attention like a conditioned robot.
“I’ll come back, Ben. We need to talk more. I’ll try to help you. I promise.”
“Time!” announced the guard.
Ben didn’t speak at all. He just turned and shuffled toward the door.
Chapter Nineteen
Recap
When I got back to the car, I turned on my cell phone and found two messages from Amanda. I guessed it was time to tell her what was up, but I didn’t want to do it on t
he phone.
“Hey, you,” she said when she picked up. “Where the heck are you? I was worried when you didn’t pick up. Are you okay?’
“Hey back. I’m fine. Where are you?”
“Driving home from work. I’ve been calling the house all day, and I tried your cell twice. Are you avoiding me? Afraid I’ll really show up Friday night?”
“Actually, I am on my way to Twin Oaks to see the love of my life.” That was kind of mushy. Maybe thinking about the kid’s story made me corny.
She saw right through me. “You trying to butter me up for a conjugal visit?”
“Funny choice of words,” I replied.
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll explain when I see you. You are free for dinner, aren’t you?”
“Well, I’ll have to call my other boyfriend and tell him to change our plans, but yes, I think I can squeeze you in.”
“Literally?”
“That, too.” I heard her giggle.
I really did love that woman. I drove as fast as possible to Twin Oaks and was very happily surprised to find Amanda waiting for me in an outfit from Victoria’s Secret. Did I mention that I loved that woman? Anyway, we were late for the dinner reservations she’d made. That was what happens when dessert is first.
We went to an amazing Italian place in Twin Oaks and ordered dinner and a bottle of red. Remembering the great bottle of red at her house when she had first kidnapped me, I selected their best brunello…Franci, which was perhaps one of the best examples that came from brunello di Montalcino that I’d ever tasted.
“So how’s it going, Mr. Fix-It? Build an addition to the house yet?”
“Actually, I got sidetracked. Let me tell you what happened when I started working on the basement. This is going to take a while.”
Then I spilled the beans. She sat wide-eyed with her mouth hanging open. I ended with the prison visit. When I was finished, I waited for her to say something.
She just stared at me.
Finally, she asked, “So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Practice being a detective, I guess. The guy I talked to in Maury may be a rapist and a murderer, for all I know. Twelve people on a jury thought so, anyway. But I just get the gut feeling he got railroaded. And I need to finish reading this girl’s diary.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t already.”
“Yeah, well…I can only take it in little doses. If the girl is being truthful, it was a horrible way to live.”
“What do you mean if? It was her diary.”
“You ever have one?”
“Actually, yes. Lots of girls keep journals at that age. Sometimes it helps to get stuff out on paper. I had lots of little secrets in mine…and they were all true.”
“I guess boys are smart enough not to incriminate themselves on paper,” I said with a smile.
“Yeah, well, maybe that’s true, too. But me and my girlfriends, we all kept diaries. Sometimes we would show each other a page here or there. It was easier than telling each other some of the stuff we were doing or thinking.”
“Would you want to read hers?”
“Maybe.”
“I’ll warn you now. I have taken to referring to Congressman Stone simply as ‘That Sick Fuck’. That’s his new name.”
The wine arrived with great ceremony and was decanted tableside. The cork was presented to me like I had won an Oscar. We stopped our conversation and watched our server, who poured me a taste, which made my eyes close in sheer joy. Then he poured Amanda a glass.
She tasted hers with equal relish. “Wow.”
“Yeah, pretty amazing, right?”
Our server filled my glass and smiled. “I’m glad you like it. Franci is the best brunello on the list. For dessert, I’ll show you a Sauternes if you care for an after-dinner drink. Château d’Yquem. We have an impressive wine list here.”
The server disappeared after our glasses were filled, and Amanda shook her head slowly and spoke quietly. “You hear stories like this all the time in the papers. I’ve never known anyone who was abused by their parents. You?”
“No. Only by my drill sergeant.”
Dinner came and thankfully, we changed topics for a while. I was pretty fried thinking about Ben the whole ride from Maury. What if he were innocent? Twenty years in that place? I owed it to him as much as to Casey to find out what had happened. To try, anyway.
After an amazing dinner, with Amanda regaling me with amusing anecdotes about her new patients, then a half-bottle of that château d’Yquem, which cost almost as much as the whole dinner, we went back to Amanda’s place and enjoyed a very romantic night. The next morning, I woke up to coffee in bed.
“God, Amanda. I loved you already, but the coffee in bed definitely seals the deal,” I told her as she handed me my morning java. She sat on the bed and brushed her long hair out of her face. Damn. Even in the morning, she looked good.
“So what are you going to do, detective?”
“Keep digging, I guess.”
“Going to call the police? I think you should. That diary is evidence. It might free an innocent man who just wasted twenty years of his life.”
“If he’s innocent. I have a call out to a sheriff’s deputy who worked the case twenty years ago. I’ll know more in a few days, I guess. For now, I am holding my cards close to the vest. Earl Stone is not someone I want to screw with before I have all my facts straight. Ben’s already done twenty years. Another couple of days won’t kill him.”
Chapter Twenty
McDade
Amanda went to work, and I drove back to Harkers Island. It was about a ninety-minute drive through stunning farm country, but my mind was racing the whole time. I had a lot fewer answers than questions, but the idea of reading more of Casey’s journal made me cringe.
I’ve seen some pretty messed up shit in my day, but I was having a hard time getting my head around this. I kept thinking about the last line I had read. ‘What if Mom knows and she doesn’t care?’ I mean, was that humanly possible?
When I got back to Harkers, I have to say I felt like I was coming home. I hadn’t felt like that since buying the house, maybe because I hadn’t been away overnight since being down there. Even living there, I still felt like an outsider, which I would probably be to them for the next two or three hundred years. But returning now, I really did feel like I was home. It was a warm feeling. I hadn’t had a real home since I was a kid living under my parents’ roof. I still missed them sometimes…like right now.
Anyway, when I walked in, I found the answering machine blinking. The first message was from Agatha. She had left me a present on the back porch. The second message was from a gruff-sounding man with a smoker’s rasp who seemed half in the bag. It was the call I had been waiting for—Arthur McDade, Carteret Sheriff’s Deputy, retired. The message had a strange tone, and I ended up playing it three times.
“Mr. Walker, this is Arthur McDade. I hear you been asking about me. I always wondered if anybody would look at the Stone case again. You can call me on my cell…”
It was like he had been expecting the call. But for twenty years? Was it so obvious that Benjamin McComb hadn’t done the crime, and everyone had just let him rot in jail anyway? I walked to the rear door and opened it to find a jar of homemade apple butter and two Mason jars of spiced peaches. There was a handwritten note from Agatha Miles inviting me to tea. Her handwriting was neat but shaky. She hadn’t looked that old when I’d met her briefly with the Realtor that day. Now I wondered how old she really was.
I picked up my goodies, went back inside and called McDade on the landline, which had better reception than my cell phone. I didn’t want to miss anything he said.
The wonders of caller ID… He said, “Hello, Mr. Walker,” like he had been sitting there for two days waiting for me to call back.
“Hello, Deputy McDade. Thanks for calling.”
“It’s Arthur. Ain’t been a deputy for a very long tim
e. You told my pal Bill you were an old friend of Casey Stone’s. That right?”
“That’s what I told him. It’s a bit more complicated, though. I bought the old Stone house. There’s something I need to talk to you about. Maybe we could meet tomorrow? Or the next day? How far from Harkers Island are you?”
“I ain’t far enough. And I won’t meet you. I’m ten hours away by car. That’s as close as I’ll ever get to Carteret County, and I don’t take visitors.”
I sat back and pondered his attitude. He had called me. He must want to talk about something.
“Okay, Arthur. But can I ask you a few questions?”
“You a lawyer?”
“No, sir. Not a lawyer, not a cop, nothing like that at all. I just own the Stone house, now…and I found something.”
There was a long silence.
“Arthur, you were the first on the scene that morning, right?”
“First deputy, but not the first person. Earl Stone was already there with a few other locals. The man who found her, Tom Wood, he recognized the girl. He’d called the girl’s folks. He’d pulled her out of the water next to his boat. Shook him up pretty good, as I recall. Anyway, the girl was dead. Looked like she had been in the water all night. Her mom hanged herself when she got the news.”
“Do you think Benjamin McComb killed her, Arthur?” Another very long silence.
“I don’t know, Mr. Walker,” he said thoughtfully.
“He’s been sitting in Maury for twenty years. Don’t you think you should be sure?”
“Don’t put that on me. I tried to broaden the investigation. I was taken off the case. When I went back and spoke to the detectives assigned to it, I was reprimanded for interfering. When I asked about it a few weeks later and tried to talk to the sheriff, I was moved to another station halfway across the county and given bullshit to do until I had to quit. They forced me out, Walker.”
“Because of this case?”
“I never had anything below an outstanding review. And I wasn’t the only one.”
I felt my heart pounding in my chest. “Who else?”
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